Lbk Culture

The spread of farming out of the Balkans and into the rest of Europe followed two distinct routes: An initial expansion represented by the Impressa and Cardial traditions, which followed the Northern Mediterranean coastline; and another expansion represented by the LBK (Linearbandkeramik) tradition, which followed the Danube River into Central Europe. Although genomic data now exist from samples representing the second migration, such data have yet to be successfully generated from the initial Mediterranean migration. To address this, we generated the complete genome of a 7,400-year-old Cardial individual (CB13) from Cova Bonica in Vallirana (Barcelona), as well as partial nuclear data from five others excavated from different sites in Spain and Portugal. CB13 clusters with all previously sequenced early European farmers and modern-day Sardinians. Furthermore, our analyses suggest that both Cardial and LBK peoples derived from a common ancient population located in or around the Balkan Peninsula. The Iberian Cardial genome also carries a discernible hunter–gatherer genetic signature that likely was not acquired by admixture with local Iberian foragers. Our results indicate that retrieving ancient genomes from similarly warm Mediterranean environments such as the Near East is technically feasible.

The very earliest LBK sites have loads of pottery sherds with limited evidence of agriculture or stock-breeding. Later LBK sites are characterized by longhouses with rectangular plans, incised pottery, and a blade technology for chipped stone tools. The tools include raw material of high-quality flints including a distinctive "chocolate" flint from southern Poland, Rijkholt flint from the Netherlands and traded obsidian.

Domesticated crops used by the LBK culture include emmer and einkorn wheat, crab apple, peas, lentils, flax, linseed, poppies, and barley. Domestic animals include cattle, sheep and goats, and occasionally a pig or two.

The LBK lived in small villages along streams or waterways characterized by large longhouses, buildings used for keeping livestock, sheltering people and providing workspace. The rectangular longhouses were between 7 and 45 meters long and between 5 and 7 meters wide. They were built of massive timber posts chinked with wattle and daub mortar.

LBK cemeteries are found a short distance away from the villages, and, in general, are marked by single flexed burials accompanied by grave goods. However, mass burials are known at some sites, and some cemeteries are located within communities.

Chronology of the LBK

The earliest LBK sites are found in the Starcevo-Koros culture of the Hungarian plain, around 5700 BC. From there, the early LBK spreads separately east, north and west.

The LBK reached the Rhine and Neckar valleys of Germany about 5500 BC. The people spread into Alsace and the Rhineland by 5300 BC. By the mid-5th millennium BC, La Hoguette Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and LBK immigrants shared the region and, eventually, only LBK was left.

Linearbandkeramik and Violence

There seems to be considerable evidence that relationships between the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in Europe and the LBK migrants were not entirely peaceful. Evidence for violence exists at many LBK village sites. Massacres of whole villages and portions of villages appear to be in evidence at sites such as Talheim, Schletz-Asparn, Herxheim, and Vaihingen. Mutilated remains suggesting cannibalism have been noted at Eilsleben and Ober-Hogern. The westernmost area appears to have the most evidence for violence, with about one-third of the burials showing evidence of traumatic injuries.

https://www.thoughtco.com/linearbandkeramik-culture-farming-innovators-171552

LBK people had an average body height of 166.6 cm for men (ranging from 156.5 to 175.5 cm) and 158 cm for women, considerably shorter than Mesolithic Europeans of the same period. Ancient DNA tests have shown that LBK people had fair skin, brown eyes and dark hair, while Mesolithic Europeans had darker skin, dark hair, but blue eyes. Both groups were lactose intolerant.

Linear Pottery Culture (aka LBK, c. 8,000 to 6,500 ybp ; Central Europe): H (x12), H1, H1j, H5 (x2), H26b, HV (x2), J (x7), J1c17, K (x10), K1a (x8), K1a2, K1a3a3, K2a5, N1a1a (x3), N1a1a1, N1a1a1a, N1a1a1a1, N1a1a1a2, N1a1a1a3 (x5), N1a1a3, T (x3), T1a, T2 (x3), T2b (x9), T2b23 (x2), T2b23a, T2c (x2), T2c1, T2c1b, T2e (x4), U2, U3, U5a1, U5a1a'g, U5b, U5b2c, V, W (x2), X2d1

Alföld Linear Pottery Culture (c. 7,850 to 7,350 ybp : Hungary): H, J1c1, N1a

https://www.eupedia.com/genetics/linear_pottery_culture.shtml

GLORIA STEINEM

by Letty Cottin Pogrebin

She was born to a rebellious Scotch Presbyterian mother, raised in Theosophy, and baptized in a Congregational church at the age of ten because her mother thought she should be old enough to remember it. She lost what little interest she had in religion when she became a feminist and started “wondering why God always looks like the ruling class,” but she still loves the pagan parts of Christmas—the tree, presents, and midnight Mass. With all this, what is Gloria Steinem doing in a Jewish women’s encyclopedia?

She is included here because her father was a Jew, because she considers herself an outsider and sees Jews as the quintessential out-group, and because she feels drawn to the spirituality and social justice agenda of Jewish feminism. She is here because, as she puts it, “Never in my life have I identified myself as a Christian, but wherever there is antisemitism, I identify as a Jew.” Finally, she is here because in the eyes of the world she is Jewish, and thus whatever she does is associated with Jews and Judaism, for good or for ill.

When historians distill the essence of the women’s movement known as the Second Wave (as opposed to the suffrage campaign, the First Wave), they often embody it in two names—Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem—both ground-breaking pioneers, both identified as Jews. By the same token, when extremists of the ultra-right excoriate feminism, they name Steinem (along with Friedan and former Congresswoman Bella Abzug) as a leader of the “Jewish conspiracy” to destroy the Christian family. They claim that the struggle for abortion rights is a Jewish plot to kill Christian babies, or that empowering children, women and minorities is a threat to the God-given hegemony of white Christian men. If Steinem is their Jew, she is ours.

Although she is recognized around the world as a writer, speaker, political activist, and feminist visionary, the facts about Gloria Steinem’s Jewish origins, tenuous and meager though they may be, are virtually unknown. To recognize those connections here is not to exaggerate their significance but merely to acknowledge the unacknowledged and to suggest that even without full-fledged Jewish identity—one forged by affiliation or halakhic legitimacy (religious law)—this is a woman who acts Jewishly in the world.

Gloria Steinem was born on March 25, 1934, in Toledo, Ohio, to Ruth and Leo Steinem. Her father, an itinerant antique dealer, spent winters selling his wares from a house trailer, usually with his family in tow; as a result, Gloria did not spend a full year in school until she was twelve years old. In the summers, Leo owned and operated a beach resort at Clark Lake, Michigan, where little Gloria apprenticed herself to the nightclub entertainers and learned to tap-dance.

Steinem’s appreciation of Judaism, such as it was, came at the hands of her non-Jewish mother. A former journalist, Ruth Steinem took some pains to make sure both Gloria and her older sister, Susanne, understood the evils of antisemitism and knew about the horrific crimes of the Holocaust. Steinem remembers that when she was eight or so, her mother encouraged her to listen to a radio dramatization of Jewish torment under the Nazis and the story of a mother who could not get enough food for her little girl. “This is going on in the world,” Ruth Steinem said, “and we must know about it.” She also taught her daughters that being Jewish was a proud heritage.

Pauline Perlmutter Steinem, Gloria’s paternal grandmother, was born in Germany after her family’s escape from Russia and grew up in Munich, the daughter of a cantor. She achieved the equivalent of a college education in order to become a teacher, then married Joseph Steinem and immigrated to America. Pauline Steinem died when Gloria was five, but she left her granddaughter with vivid “sense memories” of an intelligent, calm, well-organized woman who remains a strong role model. A well-known women’s rights activist, chair of the educational committee of the National Woman Suffrage Association, a delegate to the 1908 International Council of Women, and the first woman to be elected to the Toledo Board of Education, Pauline Steinem was also a leader in the movement for vocational education. She was deeply distressed by the gathering stormclouds in Germany. In the mid-1930s, during the early years of the Nazi terror, when it cost five hundred dollars to get a Jew out of Germany and into Palestine, Pauline Steinem managed to rescue many members of her family.

Despite having the benefits of a hard-won education at the University of Toledo and a career as a journalist at a time when she first had to write under a man’s name, Ruth Steinem’s spirit was broken by the conflict between work and family that caused her to give up the career she loved. In response to this and other strains, she suffered incapacitating depressions and hallucinations. She and Leo divorced in 1945, and eleven-year-old Gloria became housekeeper, cook, and caregiver to her mother during a period that, at best, can be called cheerless and at worst, spiritually and financially impoverished. In her early teens, Gloria performed at local clubs for ten dollars a night, hoping to tap-dance her way out of Toledo. When she was sixteen, she worked as a salesgirl after school and on Saturdays. The following year, she was rescued by Susanne, who persuaded their father, despite the divorce, to take over Ruth’s care for one year so that Gloria could get away and live with her sister in Washington, D.C.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/steinem-gloria

In 1952, after graduating from Washington’s Western High School, Steinem entered Smith College, where she danced in college productions and majored in government. She spent her junior year in Geneva and a summer in Oxford, earned a Phi Beta Kappa key, and graduated magna cum laude. A Chester Bowles Fellowship sent her to India, where for nearly two years she immersed herself in the culture of a people she grew to love and would often write about, first in a government guidebook, The 1000 Indias, and later in essays on the relevance of Gandhian principles to grassroots organizing, especially for the women’s movement.

Back in the United States in 1958, she moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and worked for Independent Research Service, a group that tried to persuade American students to attend communist youth festivals then being held in Europe. Hoping for a career as a writer, she moved to New York City in 1960, a time when women were expected to be Gal Fridays and gossip columnists, not serious journalists. She managed to cobble a modest living from odd scraps of assignments—working with Harvey Kurtzman, creator of Mad magazine, on his new project, Help!, a journal of political satire, and contributing short articles to Glamour, Ladies’ Home Journal, and other women’s magazines. She also did unsigned pieces for Esquire, which eventually published her first bylined piece, a story about the then-new contraceptive pill. A year later, in 1963, Steinem herself made headlines when she got an assignment from Show magazine for which she took a job as a Bunny at the Playboy Club and wrote an exposé of the unglamorous working conditions of the club’s glorified waitresses—sex objects in rabbit ears and cotton tails.

Johann, Erzherzog von Österreich

© Copyright

Archduke Johann, Administrator of the Realm, 1848, painting, around 1849

Johann, Archduke of Austria, b. Florence (Italy), Jan. 20, 1782, d. Graz (Styria), May 10, 1859. 13th child of Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany, who became Emperor Leopold II, Franz°II (I). Originally destined for a military career, J. soon developed particular interest in nature, technology and agriculture; he collected minerals, was an alpinist and hunter. In the Napoleonic Wars J. served as field marshal and general manager of military engineering and fortifications. On December 3, 1800 he lost the battle of Hohenlinden and in 1805 fought the French and the Bavarians. In 1808 he organised the Landwehr reserve army for the popular uprising against Napoleon in Tyrol and in Inner-Austria; in 1809 he supported Tyrol's fight for freedom led by the Tyrolean peasant and freedom fighter A. Hofer, and became commander in chief of the Southern Army against E. Beauharnais. Victorious at Sacile, but defeated at Raab.

Because of his participation in the Alpenbund, a Tyrolean resistance movement, and after the suppression of the Tyrolean popular uprising, his brother, Emperor Franz I forbade him to set foot on Tyrolean soil. He therefore turned his attention to Styria. In 1811 laid the foundation for the Joanneum museum in Graz by donating his collections. The following institutions were generally encouraged by Archduke J.: Styrian Archives (1817), School for Mining and Metallurgical Practice in Vordernberg (from 1849 in Leoben, University of Mining and Metallurgy), the Styrian Agricultural Association (1819), the insurance agency for fire damage "Wechselseitige", the "Steiermarkische Sparkasse" savings bank, the "Landesoberrealschule", a secondary school emphasising studies of mathematics and science (1845), the Association for Styrian History (1850). In 1818 he acquired the Brandhof estate near Mariazell and transformed it into an alpine model farm. In 1822 he acquired two iron works in Vordernberg and became owner of an iron mine, revolutionised the extraction and production of ore at the Erzberg open-cast mine in Styria by founding the Vordernberger Radmeister-Communität in 1835, the first railway using iron rails on the European continent. Also acquired a sheet-metal factory in Krems and coal mines near Köflach. In 1841 purchased the domain of Stainz including the former monastery, where he was also the first freely elected mayor in 1851. At Pickern near Marburg (Slovenia) J. founded a vine-growing estate and introduced vine plants from the Rhineland. One of his special achievements was the routing of the Southern railway from Vienna to Trieste, via the Semmering and the Mürz and Mur valleys and Graz. His affection for the common people was reflected in his close contact with them, he wore traditional costumes (Steireranzug), collected folk art and encouraged the material and intellectual culture of the country. In 1829 married Anna Plochl, the daughter of a postmaster from Aussee. Their descendants were given the title "Grafen von Meran" (Counts of Merano). His autobiographical work, "Der Brandhofer und seine Hausfrau" gives interesting insights into his life-style. J. enjoyed the company of numerous artists ("chamber painters") and scientists. In 1848 was nominated the Emperor´s deputy and opened the Constituent Imperial Diet in Vienna. In 1848 he was also elected Administrator of the Realm by the all-German National Assembly in Frankfurt, but resigned from this office in 1849. J. is buried in Schenna near Meran/Merano (South Tyrol).

Literature: A. Schlossar, Erzherzog J. im Liede, 1882; K. L. Schubert, Erzherzog J. und der Bergbau, 1954; W. Koschatzky, Der Brandhofer, 31978; V. Theiß, Erzherzog J. Der steirische Prinz, 21981; G. Klingenstein (ed.), Erzherzog J. von Österreich, 1982; O. Pickl (ed.), Erzherzog J. von Österreich, 1982.

CLAUDE DE LA SENGLE (1494 - 1557) Grand Master of the Order of St. John and Founder of a Maritime City

The fifth Grand Master of Malta elected on 11 September 1553, a French noble man, Grand Hospitaller of the Order and Ambassador at the Court of Pope Julius III. The Grand Master strengthened the fortifications around The Great Harbour and conceived the idea of building a new city on a grid plan. Land was offered at a nominal price to encourage people to live in the locality.

The King of Spain wanted to grant Mehdia to the Order and a commission was set up and recommended to turn down the offer due to lack of funds. The King of Spain ordered the Viceroy of Sicily to destroy Mehdia to avoid Arab occupation. Giovannio de Vega retaliated and prohibited the exportation of wheat to Malta to starve the inhabitants. The Palermitan engineer Vincenzo Vogo was brought over by La Sengle to assist in a program to upgrade the mills.

The GrandMaster was to face more trouble because the Prior of Capua Fra Leone Strozzi betrayed the Order and Malta. Having escaped from a prison in Sicily, Strozzi requested the command of three galleys to fight Dragut. The squadron left Malta on 19 April 1554 and instead joined forces with France, a situation that embarrassed the Order as France and Spain were at loggerheads. Consequently FraLeone Strozzi was dismissed.

In 1555 four galleys namely, Santa Fè, San Michele, San Filippo and San Claudio were capsized by a hurricane causing the death of six hundred men. The Treasury was not in a position to replace the lost warships. Immediate assistance came from Spain, the Vatican, France and the Prior of St. Giles to substitute the lost ships. La Sengle commissioned the building of a galley in Messina at his own expense.

The Prior François De Lorena son of the Duchess of Guise and nephew of the King of France made pressure on La Sengle to designate him Captain Genral of the Fleet. In 1557 five galleys commanded by De Lorena left harbour and sailed towards Rhodes to engage the Moslem Fleet. The Order was defeated and the shattered squadron returned on 17 June 1557. Witnessing this misfortune were the Grand Master and others crying in despair the loss of their beloved ones.

The Grand Master could not bear more grief and went to rest at the Boschetto. His health deteriorated and his soul reposed on 18 August 1557 at exactly two o'clock in the afternoon. Greatly missed by his subordinates and despite all these mishaps never mistreated the Maltese. La Sengle was buried in the vault of St. Angelo and his heart deposited at the Carmelite Church at Rabat. He left the enormous sum of 80,000 scudi for the Order's Treasury

The Maltese Islands c.1800

At the end of the 18th century, Malta was a feudal anachronism ruled by the Order of St John, the Knights Hospitaller. Their moment of glory, repulsing the siege of Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent (1565), was long past. In 1775 an edict banning hare-hunting provoked a brief rebellion led by Catholic priests; taxes were high, corn expensive, the Hospitallers aloof. So when, in 1798, Napoleon breezed in, and in typically whirlwind fashion abolished slavery, introduced public education and created municipal government (all in six days), he was warmly received. But after he moved on, the French administration began looting the island’s wealth to subsidize its massive war effort. The Maltese rebelled, besieging the French garrison in Valletta, and appealing to the British for support. Horatio Nelson obliged, accepting the garrison’s surrender (1800). Malta voluntarily became a Britsih protectorate, remaining so until indepenedence (1964).

Anachronism

An event placed at a wrong date; as when Shakespeare, in Troilus and Cressida, makes Nestor quote Aristotle. (Greek, ana chronos, out of time.)

Gagauz

They are either Christianized and Bulgarianized Turks or linguistically Turkicized Christian Bulgarians; they speak the north-western dialect of Turkish with many Slavic, particularly Bulgarian and lately Russian, additions. The Gagauz claim that they migrated to Bessarabia in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Only a handful now remain in their original area of settlement, the western shores of the Black Sea (Romania and Bulgaria). With the annexation of Bessarabia to Russia, the Gagauz settled in southern Bessarabia as privileged colonists.

 

Historical context

Following the Soviet annexation of Bessarabia in 1940, the Gagauz-populated areas were divided between the Moldavian and the Ukrainian SSRs. The Gagauz populate some of the poorest areas of Moldova. Under Soviet rule, the Gagauz were subject to Russification with the Cyrillic script introduced in 1957 and Russian taught in schools from the late 1950s. Some 73 per cent of Gagauz consider Russian to be their second language, and most of the political elite are Russian-speakers.

Within the Soviet Union, the Gagauz was the largest Turkic population not to have its own territorial formation. Throughout the Soviet period, ethnic awareness remained weakly developed among the Gagauz. This situation changed rapidly in the late 1980s as fear of Romanianization spread. Although the 1989 language law permitted the use of Gagauz, strikes against the elevation of Moldovan to the status of state language took place in Gagauz areas. In response to the Moldovan declaration of sovereignty, the authorities in Komrat, the administrative centre of the Gagauz region, announced the creation of the Gagauz Soviet Socialist Republic.

Gagauz actions led to a period of dual power in the region. During 1992-3, Gagauz paramilitary units intermittently clashed with Moldovan local authorities, but the Gagauz stayed out of the Transnistria conflict. Nevertheless, Komrat worked in tandem with Tiraspol to promote the idea of developing Moldova as a confederation of three states. As 70 per cent of the world’s Gagauz live in Moldova, the Gagauz do not consider themselves a national minority but rather a people with a right to a national territory. The Turkish mission in Moldova has supported the more moderate idea of autonomy for the Gagauz within the context of a united Moldova.

In February 1994, the Gagauz agreed to abandon their aim of confederation and to participate in parliamentary elections in return for support for Gagauz demands for autonomy. The Gagauz areas cast their vote for the Unity-Socialist alliance – the Russian-speakers’ bloc. In July 1994, a new Moldovan Constitution was approved with an article guaranteeing autonomy for the Gagauz-inhabited districts.

In December 1994 the law ‘On The Special Legal Status of Gagauz Yeri (land)/Gagauzia’ was passed. The preamble of the law recognizes the Gagauz as a ‘people’ – not an ethnic group or ethnic population, as Soviet theory had indicated – and recognizes their right to self-determination within Moldova. The initiative combined two principles: it linked nationality as a corporate body to a specific territory and a notion of constitutional guarantees, devolution of powers, representative institutions, checks and balances. The law also allowed Gagauz self-determination if Moldova should change its status as an independent state.

Under the terms of the law, the Gagauz autonomous region was to have its own legislature, the Halk Toplusu, elected for four years and executive authorities – a chief executive (Bashkhan), to hold the ex officio position of a deputy prime minister of Moldova – both exercising substantial devolved powers; and three official languages were to be Gagauz, Moldovan and Russian. Gagauzia was to have its own judicial, police and security bodies under shared regional and central jurisdiction. The central authorities retained sovereignty over citizenship, finance, defence and foreign policy.

Leaf The Mysterious

 (Photo: Statue of Eriksson in Iceland via   Scott Larsen / Blogging Denmark)

Born in the 10th century, Norse explorer Leif Eriksson was the second son of Erik the Red, who is credited with settling Greenland. For his part, Eriksson is considered by many to be the first European to reach North America, centuries ahead of Christopher Columbus. However, the details of his voyage are a matter of historical debate, with one version claiming his landing accidental and another that he had sailed there intentionally after learning of the region from earlier explorers. In either case, Eriksson eventually returned to Greenland, where he had been commissioned by Norwegian king Olaf I Tryggvason to spread Christianity and is believed to have died circa 1020.

In the 13th-century Icelandic account The Saga of Erik the Red, Eriksson’s ships are said to have drifted off course on the return voyage home, finding dry ground at last on the North American continent. They are most likely to have disembarked in what is now Nova Scotia, which Eriksson named Vinland, perhaps in reference to the wild grapes that his landing party saw there. However, The Saga of the Greenlanders, which dates to the same era, suggests that Eriksson had heard already learned of “Vinland” from another seamen, Bjarni Herjólfsson, who had already been there more than a decade earlier, and that Eriksson sailed there on purpose, landing first in an icy region he named “Helluland” (believed now to be Baffin Island) and the heavily forested “Markland” (thought to be Labrador) before eventually making his way eventually to the more hospitable Vinland.

Whatever his motives, or the lack thereof, Eriksson is generally credited as the first European to set foot on the shores of North America, nearly five centuries before Christopher Columbus would arrive in 1492. But all suggest that Eriksson was most likely a member of an early Viking voyage to North America, if not, in fact, the leader of that first expedition.

Legacy

In recognition of Eriksson’s pioneering voyage, in September 1964 the United States Congress authorized the president of the United States to declare each October 9 as Leif Eriksson Day, a national day of observance. Over the years, various groups have attempted to elevate the celebration, but due in part to the fact that Christopher Columbus’s later voyage resulted more directly in European migration to North America, its status has remained unchanged.

Despite this, Leif Eriksson’s voyage is commemorated by statues throughout the United States, and in Newfoundland, Norway, Iceland and Greenland, and Iceland’s Exploration Museum annually presents its Leif Eriksson Awards for achievements in the field of exploration.